Prof.
Robert Blecker’s Statement to accompany Testimony before the New Jersey Death
Penalty Study Commission 10/11/06 (supplemented) -
My own
in-depth interviews with street killers confirms this and explodes the
categorical denial that the death penalty is ever a marginally more effective deterrent than life without
parole. One killer -- call him “Joe” –
described his robbery of a middle-level drug dealer by breaking into his house
in Virginia. Inside he found his victims
with their expected kilos of cocaine, but also with a large quantity of
heroin. With the occupants bound and
gagged, Joe told his cohort to wait outside.
He planned to kill his robbery victims but at the last moment changed
his mind. “Why?” I asked him. Why had he let them live?
“When
I was doing time in Richmond, I used to see the electric chair when I swept the
hall. And what flashed in my mind was
that chair, and I didn’t want that. So I
let them live.”
He then
described a similar situation in Washington D.C. which has no death penalty,
but does have life. “What did you
do?” I asked. “I killed them. Because I knew I could face life inside this
joint. I had done time, and I knew I
could do it again.”
Of course
this is only one instance – one anecdote.
But it is the most direct kind of evidence we can ever hope to
have. And there are other stories, in
the literature, and from my own interviews confirming it. For most people -- and especially for those
who have already served time in prison and do not fear it – only the threat of
death, and sometimes not even that will restrain them.
Click the photo to learn more about the Electric Chair:
The Fear of Death and punishment is crucial for stopping people committing crimes. If a man with no morals saw that there was no punishment or a weak punishment for a crime he would have no problem committing it.
ReplyDeleteWell said, I agree with you 100%
DeleteWhen Governor Pat Quinn signed the bill which abolished the death penalty in Illinois on Wednesday 9 March 2011, some Death Penalty Abolitionists claim that Illinois will be a safer and more civilized and humane place to live. But early this year (2012) prove them wrong, homicides in Chicago soared by 60 percent in the first three months of 2012, continuing a troublesome trend that began late last year. A philosopher and a researcher warned that abolishing capital punishment will increase homicide and their words were proven right!
French philosopher Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre: “All grandeur, all power, and all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.”
From 2001 to 2007, 12 academic studies were carried out in the US that examined the impact of the death penalty on local crime rates. They explored the hypothesis that as the potential cost of an action increases, so people are deterred from doing it. Nine out of twelve of the studies concluded that the death penalty saves lives. Some of their findings are stunning. Professors at Emory University determined that each execution deters an average of 18 murders. Another Emory study found that speeding up executions strengthens deterrence: for every 2.75 years cut from an inmate’s stay on death row, one murder would be prevented. Illinois has just voted to stop executions across the state. According to a University of Houston study, that could be a fatal mistake. It discovered that an earlier Illinois moratorium in 2000 encouraged 150 additional homicides in four years. (As Britain debates the death penalty again, studies from America confirm that it works By Tim Stanley US politics August 5th, 2011)
http://wwwiloveccp-thepunisher2008.blogspot.com.au/search/label/Illinois